Rod Ellis
University of Auckland
And
Shanghai International Studies University

All language instruction is an attempt to intervene in the process of language learning.
There are two basic types of intervention:
1. Direct Intervention
2. Indirect intervention

Direct intervention involves providing learners with explicit information about the target of the instruction usually together with opportunities to practise the target.
It involves:
• explicit instruction
• intentional language learning on the part of the learner.
Long – ‘focus on forms’

Indirect intervention involves setting up opportunities for learners to learn without specifying what the target of the instruction.
Main characteristics:
• implicit teaching
• opportunities to engage in using language
• caters to incidental language learning on the part of the learner.
Long – ‘focus on form’

Direct intervention (explicit instruction) Indirect intervention (implicit instruction)
• directs attention to target form
• is predetermined and planned (e.g. as the main focus and goal of a teaching activity
• is obtrusive (interruption of communicative meaning) * presents target forms in isolation
• uses metalinguistic terminology
(e.g. rule explanation)
• typically also involves controlled practice of the target form
• attracts attention to target form
• is delivered spontaneously (e.g. in an otherwise communicationoriented activity)
• is unobtrusive (minimal interruption of communication of meaning)
• presents target forms in context
• makes no use of metalanguage
• encourages free use of the target form

1. Strong interface position: explicit knowledge is transformed into implicit knowledge through practice.
2. Weak interface position: explicit knowledge is not directly transformed into implicit knowledge but facilitates the processes responsible for its development.
3. Non-interface position: explicit and implicit knowledge are disassociated and different processes are involved in their development.
(1) And (2) lend support to explicit instruction but in different ways. (3) lends support to implicit instruction.

1. Deductive explicit instruction: learners are provided with metalinguistic information about the target of the instruction.
2. Inductive explicit instruction: no metalinguistic information is provided and learners induce explicit knowledge from examples provided.

Theoretical basis Types Instructional approaches
Deductive Pedagogic grammar and production practice (as
in presentation-practice-production i.e. PPP)
Interface position
Strong Skill-learning theory
(DeKeyser, 1998).
Deductive Integrated instruction (i.e. explicit explanation provided during communicative practice).
Strong
Deductive Concept-based instruction (involving presentation of ‘scientific concepts’ and production practice
Deductive Comprehension-based instruction (as in
Processing Instruction)
Strong
Strong
Inductive Pattern practice (as in the Audiolingual Method) Strong
Inductive Consciousness-raising tasks Weak
Transfer Appropriate
Processing
(Lightbown, 2008).
Sociocultural theory
(Lantolf and Thorne,
2006
Input Processing
Theory (VanPatten,
1996)
Behaviourism (habitformation)
Theory of Instructed
Language Learning
(Ellis, 1994)

Presentation-Practice-Production instruction
(PPP)
• Dominant approach in language teaching materials
• Structural syllabus
• Skill-learning theory - declarative knowledge (i.e. explicit knowledge of specific linguistic forms) is proceduralized through practice until eventually it becomes automatic.
• Importance of final ‘P’ (i.e. in communicative grammar tasks) to provide ‘real operating conditions’
• Strong interface position

The test of PPP is whether it results in the learners’ ability to communicate freely using the language feature targeted by the instruction. That is, it is necessary to show that the instruction results not just in improved accuracy in controlled production (e.g. in discrete points tests) but also in free production (i.e. in tasks that elicit spontaneous communication).

 319 Grade 6 students in a French immersion program in Canada
 Explicit instruction including communicative practice activities; instruction lasted several weeks
 Two French verb tenses (passé compose and imparfait)
 Various measures of learning including free oral production
 Experimental group outperformed control group on all measures

But the end result may not be ‘true’ implicit knowledge but rather speeded-up declarative knowledge.
Automatized declarative knowledge is not equivalent to implicit knowledge.

• Integrated explicit instruction embeds explicit explanation within communicative practice activities.
• Transfer Appropriate Processing Hypothesis - ‘we can better remember what we have learned if the cognitive processes that are active during learning are similar to those that are active during retrieval’
(Lightbown, 2008: 27).
• Therefore explicit information will be more effective if it is provided while learners are communicating.

 Target structure – English passive
 Isolated instruction - target structure was first explained followed by communicative/content-based activities
 Integrated instruction - quick explanations provided during communicative practice
 Assessment - written error-correction test and a picture-cued oral production task.
 Both types of instruction effective
 The isolated instruction led to higher scores for passive on the error-correction test while the integrated instruction group did better on the oral production task.

Concept-based instruction emphasizes the importance of developing ‘conceptually organized grammatical knowledge’ using descriptions that explain in detail the link between form and semantic/ functional concepts.
Rules-of-thumb versus ‘scientific descriptions’.

1) organized around coherent theoretical units
2) provides a material instantiation of the target concepts
3) requires learners to verbalize the concept-based explanation

 12 university students in a Spanish as a foreign language course
 explicit instruction consisted of a flow chart that led the learners through a series of questions to help them understand use of preterite and imperfect tenses in Spanish.
 students verbalized the flow chart while carrying out oral and written activities
 The students’ verbal explanations of the grammatical structures were collected at the beginning and end of the course.
 Simplistic and incomplete learner explanations replaced by more coherent and accurate explanations.
 The learners able to use the formal features associated with the target concepts more accurately at the end of the course.

‘a type of grammar instruction whose purpose is to affect the ways in which learners attend to input data’
Three components: o Explicit explanation of the target structure.
o Explicit strategy training to enable learners to overcome the default processing strategy.
o Structured input activities.

 42 comparative research experiments involving
Processing Instruction.
 Processing Instruction superior to productionbased instruction in the receptive tests
 Overall no significant differences between the two types of instruction in the productive tests.
 Production-based instruction was superior when both groups received the same explicit information.
In other words, explicit information proved of greater importance in production-based instruction.

1. relatively few grammatical structures have been investigated to date
2. Shintani found that the effects of
Processing Instruction on both receptive and productive knowledge atrophied over time.
3. Third, very few of the studies included measures of learning based on free oral production.

 Different groups of learners engaged in pattern practice either with or without grammatical explanations.
 No significant differences between the inductive and deductive groups of school learners were found - very little learning occurred.
 Older learners benefitted most from the deductive method.

Sometimes controlled practice can have a deleterious effect on learning by interfering with natural acquisition processes and causing learners to overuse the structure they have practised intensively (Lightbown,
1983).

I have used the term ‘Consciousness-raising
Instruction’ to refer to instruction based on tasks designed to help learners to construct their own explicit rules about structural features without any practice activities.

Weak-interface hypothesis
Consciousness-raising tasks aim to help learners construct an explicit representation of a target feature which can then be used to facilitate the processes involved in the development of implicit knowledge (e.g. ‘noticing’ and ‘noticingthe gap’).

 university level learners of German
 two tasks (a text reconstruction task and a text repair task)
 the learners worked in pairs completing tasks that required them to attend to the ways in which grammatical form, meaning, function, and context were interrelated.
 Results - significant gains in explicit knowledge which increased over time

Limited evidence that the explicit knowledge gained from performing consciousness-raising tasks facilitates the processes involved in the subsequent development of implicit knowledge – but see Fotos (1993)

Arguably the single most important factor in explicit instruction:
 promotes attention to form
 helps learners to carry out a cognitive comparison between their deviant utterances and the correct target-language
 pushes learners to produce the correct form.

Implicit
Input-providing Conversational recasts
Outputprompting
Explicit
Didactic recast
Repetition
Explicit correction
Explicit correction + metalinguistic explanation
Metalinguistic comments
Clarification requests Elicitation
Paralinguistic signal
(adapted from Lyster, Saito & Sato, 2013:3)

Three key results:
 explicit corrective feedback (e.g. explicit correction or metalinguistic explanation) more effective than implicit feedback (e.g. recasts or clarification requests).
 Output-prompting feedback (e.g. elicitation) more effective than input-providing feedback (e.g. recasts).
 Graduated feedback can help scaffold internalization of new grammatical forms

1.
Importance of communicative practice in PPP instruction.
2.
Instruction that includes explicit explanation more be more effective than just practice activities.
3.
Timing of the explicit information may affect the type of knowledge
(explicit or implicit) that results but this awaits fuller investigation.
4.
Relative effects of rule-of-thumb and scientific concepts explanation in need of further investigation.
5.
Consciousness-raising tasks help develop explicit knowledge which may facilitate the processes involved in developing implicit knowledge.
6.
Both comprehension-based and production-based practice activities have been found to be effective.
7.
Corrective feedback plays an important and possibly essential role in the effect that explicit instruction of any kind has on learning.

Implicit instruction is instruction designed to facilitate incidental acquisition by attracting learners’ attention to linguistic form while they are primarily focused on meaning.
Implicit instruction does not assume that the learning that takes place is also implicit.

Attention to linguistic form while learners are primarily focused on meaning.
It can be achieved :
 by highlighting specific target forms in the input.
 through interaction where learners have opportunities to use the target forms, receive corrective feedback, and then modify their own output.

Implicit instruction
Memorizing sentences
Meaningcentred instruction
No focus on pre-determined grammatical forms (e.g. extensive reading)
Focus-on-form
(i.e. focus on pre-determined grammatical forms)
Textenhancement
Task-based teaching

Text enhancement can occur by:
 ‘flooding’ the input with exemplars of a specific feature
 highlighting a specific form through intonation in oral input or by bolding, italicizing or paraphrasing a specific form in written input.
In both cases the aim is to induce ‘selective attention’
(i.e. noticing) of pre-determined linguistic forms.

Text enhancement does result in noticing but overall its effect is quite small (Lee & Huang, 2008).
Its effect on acquisition is also small and it disappears over time.
Text enhancement may help learners to see what is grammatically possible in the target language but it does not help them to eradicate an erroneous rule.

Implicit grammar instruction involves the use of focused tasks, which can be inputbased or output-based.

Shintani & Ellis
(2010)
6 year old complete beginners in Japan
Doughty & Varela
(1998)
Middle school ESL students in USA
Samuda (2001)
Learners
Target structure
Plural-s Past tense
Type of task Focused input-based Focused outputbased
Main results All children developed receptive knowledge of plurals; some also developed productive knowledge.
Learners developed productive knowledge of past tense; learning maintained over time.
Adult ESL learners in intensive language programme
Epistemic models
Focused outputbased
Learners began to use target structure more frequently and more accurately.

1.
There needs to be a functional need to process the target feature and this is only possible in implicit instruction when the grammatical features contributes to meaning.
2.
Mere exposure to the grammatical targets in input – even if these are meaning-bearing – has limited effect.
3.
Instruction that draws learners’ attention to the target structure through focus-on-form in TBLT is more likely to have an effect
4.
Explicit focus-on-form may sometimes be needed – as in
Samuda’s study.
5.
Input-based tasks of the kind used in Shintani’s study can help learners acquisition of a completely new structure by developing receptive knowledge.
6.
Implicit instruction that involves learners in producing the target structures while they are primarily engaged in performing a task may be needed to ensure acquisition of productive knowledge.

1. Norris & Ortega (2000) – explicit superior
2. Spada & Tomita (2009) – both explicit and implicit effective
3. Shintani (2011) – implicit superior to explicit

Overall explicit instruction has been shown to be superior for both grammar and vocabulary.
But:
 Not all forms of explicit instruction are successful, especially when learning is measured in free production.
 Little is currently known about the role that individual difference factors such as language aptitude and age play in the efficacy of the two types of instruction.
 Acquisition of linguistic competence needs to be considered alongside acquisition of interactional a competence.